


i can't be the only one who hears you

by stillness_of_remembering



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Cats, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Humor, Kid Fic, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, Short, Spooky, ash lynx's fear of pumpkins, brief description of dead animal, i was peer pressured into writing this for a discord server writing contest, they are the kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillness_of_remembering/pseuds/stillness_of_remembering
Summary: There was a boy who had been standing in the same spot on the edge of the street for the last three houses Eiji had been to, glaring up at one house, arms crossed in front of him.“Hey!” Eiji shouted before he could think it over, walking over to him. “What are you waiting for?”---Or, Eiji and Ash trick-or-treat together soon after Eiji moves to New York as a kid.
Relationships: Ash Lynx & Okumura Eiji
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	i can't be the only one who hears you

Eiji paused on the sidewalk in front of the next house he was about to trick-or-treat at. There was a boy who had been standing in the same spot on the edge of the street for the last three houses Eiji had been to, glaring up at one house, arms crossed in front of him. 

“Hey!” Eiji shouted before he could think it over, walking over to him. “What are you waiting for?”

The boy was blond, and probably around Eiji’s age - maybe a little younger.

“I’m not waiting for anything,” the boy turned his scowl to Eiji. 

“I can go with you if you want,” Eiji said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. “And why aren’t you wearing a costume?” Eiji realized the boy didn’t even have a bag for candy either. He reached up and took off his pirate hat. “You can wear my hat!”

The boy took it hesitantly, his face growing red and his frown softening. Eiji thought he knew what this was: it must have been the boy’s first time trick-or-treating. He was probably too nervous to go by himself.

“And, what’s your name?” 

“I’m Ash. What’s your name?”

“I’m Eiji.” After a few seconds Eiji spoke again. “Are you ready to go up now?” 

Ash nodded determinedly and Eiji grabbed his hand so they could walk up together. Ash’s fingers were freezing, so Eiji rubbed his thumb over them like his mom did when he held her hand. They were five steps into the walkway when Ash stopped dead, staring at a jack o lantern sitting on the porch of the house. 

“Come on Ash.” Eiji tugged at his hand. Seeing the source of Ash’s fear, he said loudly, “I’ll protect you.” Eiji and Ash edged past the jack o lantern, Eiji making sure to keep himself between the offending pumpkin and Ash. He was surprised when Ash was the one to ring the doorbell for the both of them. 

When they got their two candy bars apiece, Eiji watched Ash shove his into his jeans pocket. 

They kept going to the next house, and the next house, and eventually Ash didn’t have any room left in his pockets for candy. 

“You can put yours in my bag, Ash,” Eiji whispered as they walked back to the sidewalk. “We can split up the candy later.”

“Okay.” Ash gave Eiji a small grin.

As it got darker and colder, Eiji’s bag began to bulge with the amount of candy that was in it. Eiji found himself not wanting to go home quite yet, though. 

“That’s the only house left,” Ash pointed out to Eiji. It was a tall, old-looking house that was mostly in the shadow of the thick woods around it. No other kids were going to or coming from the house, and there were no lights on inside. Eiji shivered as he looked at it. He really should have brought a coat with him.

“Okay, let’s go!”

They approached confidently (there were no jack o lanterns by this house) and Eiji noticed a few crows circling above them. The shadows of the barren tree branches around them formed clawed hands against the moonlit ground. 

When Eiji rang the doorbell, an eerie tone was sounded. 

“I’ve never heard a doorbell like that,” Ash said thoughtfully. The door opened with a loud creak.

“Trick-or-treat!” They said, before realizing there was no one there. Eiji and Ash looked at each other.

“They’re probably just in the space between the door and the wall,” Ash whispered in Eiji’s ear. He darted inside to look behind the door, Eiji following close behind him when- 

The door slammed shut.

(There was no one behind the door.)

Eiji jumped and turned to Ash. “Did you do that?”

“No!” Ash squeaked.

Ash lunged forward to try and open the door. Eiji joined him, but both of their combined efforts didn’t make any difference. Somehow, it had locked them in. It was then that Eiji realized how dark it was. All of the windows were boarded up, and Eiji couldn’t see a light switch anywhere. 

Eiji grabbed on to Ash. They huddled together, every creak and bird noise sounding like a ghost or some terrible monster.

“What do we do?” Ash asked in a hushed voice. 

“I don’t know,” Eiji cried. “How do we get out?”

“The windows have wood nailed down on them and it doesn’t look rotted, so we probably can’t get through them,” Ash said. “Maybe there’s a back door?”

They shuffled slowly forward, not letting go of each other. It was hard to see in the dark, but they passed several closed doors, making their way through a main hallway. There were cobwebs everywhere. 

“Wait, I just thought of something!” Eiji exclaimed. Ash tilted his head in a silent question.

Eiji reached into the candy bag and pulled out a kitkat. 

“Ghosts of this house, here’s an offering. Please let us go!” He dropped the candy bar in front of him.

“What, you thought that would work?” Ash asked, incredulous.

Eiji just pointed down at the kitkat, which was hovering half an inch above the ground.

It slowly began to float upwards until it was about at the height of their shoulders.

“Oh my god, ghosts are real,” Ash groaned, hiding his face in his hands. “Why was I ever scared of pumpkins?”

The kitkat floated a little further down the hallway, then came back to them. It repeated this motion several times. 

“It wants us to follow it further into the creepy haunted house, doesn’t it,” Ash said flatly.

“Yep,” Eiji agreed. 

“Well we better do what the floating kitkat wants, I guess.”

They slowly followed it deeper into the dark house, and it led them to a set of dilapidated stairs. With the first step they took up the stairs, the wood creaked so loudly Ash staggered backwards, flailing his arms, and fell off the step. It was only Eiji grabbing him that let him regain his balance.

The kitkat waited patiently for them to calm their breathing and begin up the stairs again, beckoning them forward every time they seemed like they might stop. 

Finally they made it to the top, and were led to a room at the very end of the second floor hallway. The first thing Eiji noticed when they walked in was the smell. There was something rotting in this room.

The next thing he saw was the dead cat on the floor. His mind took a minute to connect the smell of decomposing animal to the cat that was lying there, flies flitting around its exposed flesh.

The third thing he noticed was the noise. There was a chorus of high-pitched meowing coming from behind the bed that took up most of the room. 

Eiji and Ash gingerly stepped over the cat and made their way around the bed, the candy bar still hovering in front of them. It landed on the ground right in front of a nest made of some sort of cloth taken from elsewhere in the house. Huddled inside were four tiny black kittens. 

“That must have been their mom,” Ash murmured. 

“They have no one to take care of them anymore... So this is why the ghosts trapped us,” Eiji said.

“We need to take care of them!” Ash said passionately, before slumping. “-but my… dad would never allow me to have a pet.” 

“What if I take them home!” Eiji said. “Even if my parents don’t let me keep them I can ask around with my neighbors or take them to a shelter. But they’ve been talking about maybe getting a pet, so I think they’d let me.” 

“Okay. We can each carry two, yeah?” Ash asked Eiji. He picked up the two kittens on the left, while Eiji got the ones on the right, one cradled in each arm. He didn’t really know how to hold kittens, but he tried to support their bodies and heads. 

The presence Eiji had felt in the air had gradually became less threatening and more benevolent. He realized that the kitkat was nowhere to be seen. Huh, I guess the ghosts accepted my offering, Eiji thought.

When they made it back down the creaky stairs and through the hall, the door was already open.

Eiji lived nearby, and on their walk back Ash named the two kittens he was holding Shadow and Bat, and Eiji named his two Dracula and Skeleton.

“You asked why I wasn’t in a costume earlier,” Ash said, looking up from under his borrowed pirate hat. 

“Yeah.”

“It’s because I wasn’t supposed to go out tonight. I snuck out. I hadn’t gone trick-or-treating since I did it with my brother, and I wanted to do it again.”

Eiji thought he probably shouldn’t ask about Ash’s brother. Ash sounded so sad talking about him that there couldn’t be any happy reason they’d stopped trick-or-treating together.

“I’m happy we trick-or-treated together. I just moved here and I didn’t have anyone to trick-or-treat with either. You’ll come to visit the kittens, right?”

“Yeah, of course I’ll come to visit them!”

“And you’ll come to visit me too, yeah?” 

Ash sputtered and blushed, even as he glared at Eiji. “You’re my friend, what do you think?”

“That’s not an answer to my question!” Eiji teased. “You’re my friend too, though.”

**Author's Note:**

> look i wrote this bc of the peer pressure,,., its bad im sorry
> 
> update: i won the writing contest🤣🤣


End file.
